Sandia Labs Creates Fashionable Glitter-Sized Solar Cells
Suburban rave-goers, women of Jersey Shore, and Elton John, take note: your lives just got a little bit greener. The sartorial risk-takers over at Sandia National Labs have created glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize solar energy collection the way Liberace revolutionized the dress code for concert pianists. Made of crystalline silicon and fabricated using microelectric and microelectromechanical systems processes commonly found on electronics manufacturers' production floors, the tiny cells hold great potential for better perfomance and efficiency as well as reduced cost. At just 14 to 20 micrometers thick (less than a human hair), they are 10 times thinner than normal 6-by-6-inch brick cells and use 100 times less silicon, yet the difference in their performance is negligible (14.9 percent efficiency, versus 13-20 percent for brick panels). Also, because of their flexibility, they have myriad applications going far beyond fashion that larger, static PV cells just can't compete with. For...